The Price Of A Hard Winter
April 8th, 2015

There are a few weedy little tracts near where I live owned by Algonquin college. As a rule they host no birds of any great interest. But this evening, walking home from dinner, I heard a distinctive buzzy "peent!" coming from one of those tracts. There are only two creatures in North America that make precisely that sound, and only one that makes it while on land: American Woodcock!

In fact there was more than one of them. Woodcocks are solitary, secretive and very wild birds, usually found in places where few people go. But this evening two, maybe three of them were crammed into a tiny parcel of undeveloped land amidst the suburbs. Not coincidentally, this article was recently shared on OFNC Facebook. Woodcocks are starving in Nova Scotia for lack of open ground to feed on. They can't dig up the grubs and worms they eat when the ground is still blanketed in snow.

I think and hope that things are a little less dire for them here. The ones I found might be waiting out the slow thaw at Shirley's Bay. (Michael and I went hiking there a few days ago and ended up regretting that we hadn't worn winter boots. Large swaths of it were clear, but far from all.) The tract is completely thawed and thus presumably they can find food and drink there. It's interesting, because I've looked at those bits of land now and then and thought "might as well develop them, they're of no great use to wildlife." Today I've been proven wrong. Tiny undeveloped islands of land sometimes do matter.

Here's hoping the thaw soon accelerates, and I soon hear the twitter of skydancing woodcocks above Rifle Road!

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